what do i need for hardware? looking to upgrade to ZoneMinder.

[travis_farmer]

i generally use CentOS on my servers.
do i need a stand-alone server to run ZoneMinder, or can i run it on an already established server running CentOS 8? the machine is a Dell PowerEdge R710, with Intel Xeon CPU X5670 @ 2.93GHz, 12 cores (CentOS reports 24 cores, but i think that is not correct), 64GB ram, and about 5.7TB of storage. it is running my web server, email, and file storage.
i do have an old Dell PowerEdge 1950, but it is rather thirsty of electricity. it could be configured as a stand-alone, though.

i came here, as my current system is a cheap wal-mart Night Owl (8ch) system, and i would like to change to a network camera system using WiFi, or PoE cameras. i don't have any cameras yet, as i am still exploring my options here.

Thanks in advance for any help.

~Travis

[snake]

Technically you can, but for practical purposes I would say it depends on how many cameras you have. 1-4 cameras, then go ahead and put it on the same server. For >10 cameras, you would want a dedicated server. There is a docker image you can try (I haven't used it in production).

Wifi cameras are not as good as wired, and they are generally recommended against here.

[travis_farmer]

ok, thank you for your reply!

i will look into wired cameras, and i will use the older Dell PowerEdge 1950, though as it is a bit more power hungry, i will shop around for something newer and more efficient.

I look forward to getting rid of the old Night Owl DVR, and it's low resolution cameras.

~Travis

[travis_farmer]

had a quick (i assume), somewhat related question... is there a way to output the camera grid/multiplex to a monitor (composite or HDMI)?

~Travis

[snake]

To display to a monitor, is handled differently from traditional DVR boxes that have an HDMI output.

You can spin up a separate machine, and have that watch the screens from the LAN. One way is via https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Example_Camera_View_HTML

An admin of ZM has penned this page using Android and ZMNinja: https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/p/odroid.html

Essentially, you are viewing the streams over the LAN. It takes a bit more setup than a traditional DVR, but there are many ways to solve this, and once its setup, it works without issue.